[Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch

Mon Dec 18 02:48:40 PST 2017

The central issue is the absence of any verifiable age data on Twitter.
With the exception of "verified" accounts, where the verified user has a
known public birthdate listed somewhere other than Twitter, there is no age
data. Any account could be underage. No doubt there are minors "passing"
for adults and the opposite as well.

So, how would we know?

You could go by the Twitter user description, which is a self-assigned
brief biography that sometimes includes social demographic information
(ex., high school athlete, states ones age directly, the photograph, etc.)
but none of that is verified. You could cross-check user by user against
other public information. For example, my son is @liamcs10 on Twitter. He
is 15. If you Google his name you can verify he is a minor because he plays
on a U17 soccer club and his current roster picture is online.

At the level of the ethnographic research, you could do this time-consuming
forensic work, but it would only work in some cases, not all, and would
never scale up to the type of research many are doing with Twitter data.

So you have a problem. If you need to assure an IRB or other research
supervisory board there are no children in your Twitter data: it cannot
really be done.

Stu

Stu Shulman <https://twitter.com/StuartWShulman>MA Olympic Development
Program (ODP), Assistant Coach
Region I ODP, 2005 Boys ID Camp Staff Coach
NEFC-West 2008 Boys, Head Coach

On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 5:07 AM, Cormac O'Keeffe <okeeffe.cormac at gmail.com>
wrote:

> That's a really good pint Sonia. Thanks!
>
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 at 10:59, Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess at media.uio.no> wrote:
>
> > perfect - thanks for the most helpful clarification, Sonia!
> > - c.
> >
> > On 18/12/17 10:35, Livingstone,S wrote:
> > > Children cannot legally consent to use of their personal data,
> precisely
> > because they are children. Hence in the US COPPA applies, and in Europe
> the
> > General Data Protection Regulation., both of which require verifiable
> > parental consent for the use of children's personal data. Much depends on
> > the legal definition of personal data, of course.
> > >
> > > I would also urge a child-rights approach to research ethics. For
> > instance, contrary to what many researchers believe, and contrary to
> > companies' T&C, in my research children have told me that they consider
> > Facebook to be public and Twitter to be privacy (cf Nissenbaum's
> contextual
> > integrity).  So my understanding is that this is incorrect below, and
> that
> > much social media research is improper....
> > >
> > > Best, Sonia
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of
> > Charles M. Ess
> > > Sent: 18 December 2017 08:58
> > > To: Lior Beserman <liorbeserman at gmail.com>; air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> > > Subject: Re: [Air-L] Ethical problem in a Twitter reaserch
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > one fairly standard approach is to go ahead and conduct your research -
> > though probably with the additional step of setting up a second database
> > that assigns random identifiers to the original accounts / profiles.
> > >
> > > Once you have completed your analyses - then the question becomes what
> > you need to include as explicit quotes in the publication / dissemination
> > phase.  Typically, these are only a few - i.e., in contrast with 10s if
> not
> > 100s of thousands (if not more) of texts gathered in.
> > > Whereas informed consent is impossible for the latter - it is
> > considerably more feasible for the former.  So one possibility is to
> > contact the writers you want to quote and ask for their permission.
> > >
> > > Of course, this will not directly address the question as to whether
> > they are minors - and you're exactly right that this is a critical
> ethical
> > (and, in many jurisdictions, a legal) issue.
> > >
> > > At this point, some will argue that this is not your problem - the
> > informants have read (well, at least clicked through) the ToS and that
> such
> > posts are by a kind of default public and so don't require anything more
> > than acknowledgement (copyright to the author).  If a minor is involved,
> on
> > this view, ethical obligations to vulnerable populations are overridden
> by
> > a kind of legal coverage ostensibly provided by their agreeing to the
> ToS.
> > >
> > > Others - especially from deontological and ethics of care perspectives
> -
> > will argue that protection of minors overrides any legal contract
> > established in the ToS.  How you directly ascertain the identity of
> someone
> > on Twitter while asking for their permission to use their quote is, of
> > course, not unproblematic.  But these days, it's harder to be a dog
> > unnoticed as a dog on the Internet and so it might be more
> straightforward
> > than say 10 or certainly 20 years ago.
> > >
> > > My 2 cents - good luck and looking forward to the discussion!
> > >
> > > - charles
> > >
> > > On 18/12/17 07:46, Lior Beserman wrote:
> > >> Dear  Air-L Community,
> > >>
> > >> I have encountered an ethical problem which I am sure I am not the
> > >> first to encounter and so would appreciate your say on the matter.
> > >> I am doing a discourse analysis on a twitter hashtag and I have no way
> > >> to discern that I am not using under age (under 18) users tweets.
> > >> As there are completely different questions and guidelines to research
> > >> minors from an ethical perspective, I was wondering how other people
> > >> have dealt with this problem in their research?
> > >>
> > >> Thank you,
> > >> Lior Beserman Navon,
> > >>
> > >> Ph.D. Candidate
> > >>
> > >> The Department of Sociology & Anthropology
> > >>
> > >> The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
> > >> _______________________________________________
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> > >>
> > >
> > > --
> > > Professor in Media Studies
> > > Department of Media and Communication
> > > University of Oslo
> > > <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
> > >
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> > > c.m.ess at media.uio.no
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> > --
> > Professor in Media Studies
> > Department of Media and Communication
> > University of Oslo
> > <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
> >
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